~..no statement which refers to a "reality" transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal significance; from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.~
--Alfred Jules Ayer

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek justification for his actions.

Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and other’s eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

"After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think'em. Has a special fate been calling you and you're not listening? Is there a secret message right in front of you and you're not reading it? Is this your last, best chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?" -- Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl

You better get it while you can,
You better get it while you can.
If you wait too long, it'll all be gone
And you'll be sorry then.
It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor,
It's the same for a woman or a man.
From the cradle to the crypt
It's a mighty short trip,
So you better get it while you can.

-Steve Goodman

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

“Whenever God reaches his hand into this plane, he should pull it out dripping with physics, he should leave evidence, we should not be required to believe on faith, because there’s only one thing in the universe that needs faith, and that’s a bad salesman.”

-Aron Ra

"I feel as though the camera is almost a kind of voyeur in Mr. Beans life, and you just watch this bizarre man going about his life in the way that he wants to."

'The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries." Freeman Dyson.

"...by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought,it makes [people] more critical [,] and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today."